The lightning address service is operated by us. Someone sends us a request and we need to fetch the right BOLT11 invoice from your Hub to pass it on to the payer.

People still ignore the ease of running a Monero node?

Yeah and you don't even need to run your own Monero node to get better than the best lightning privacy. Just download a Monero wallet like Cake Wallet and you have Bitcoin on-chain ease of use and security while having lightning level fees regardless of transaction size. Actually easier since you don't need to worry about UTXO management.